This invention relates to a medical stocking. This invention more particularly relates to a stocking with components for use in diagnosing such medical conditions as phlebitis. This invention also relates to a hospital type stocking with a component for inhibiting stocking rolldown. In addition, this invention relates to a hospital type stocking with components for preventing or reducing venous stasis.
Patients in hospitals are generally required to wear compression stockings. Compression stockings are designed to exert a compressive pressure all around the wearer's leg in part for purposes of increasing interstitial tissue pressure in the leg, thereby reducing the outflow of plasma from the blood vessels. Excessive plasma outflow results in edema.
One difficulty with attempting to keep hospital patients in compression stockings is that the stockings exhibit a tendency to roll down. Inasmuch as many patients are elderly, senile, mentally disoriented, or otherwise incapable of maintaining the stockings properly rolled up, hospital personnel must attend to the patients'attire. However, it is well known that hospital personnel are overworked and have little time or inclination to continually pull up patients' socks.
One of the general purposes of compression stockings is to aid in venal circulation. Venous stasis, the failure of proper blood flow through the veins, is a potentially dangerous condition for many hospital patients. Clots may form in the blood, choking circulation and resulting in phlebitis. Clots must be removed, for example, through surgery.
Venous stasis is obviated during operations by wrapping the patient's legs in plastic sheet material which have cavities pressurized by a pump placed, for example, on the floor of the operating room.